Joan Baez

Joan Baez returns to Royal Festival Hall for four nights – in her only UK performances in 2014.

More than 50 years since her debut at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, Baez remains a musical force of nature whose influence is incalculable. At 2007’s Grammy Awards, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award, the greatest honour the Recording Academy can bestow. Her 2008 studio album Day After Tomorrow was praised by critics and nominated for a Grammy. Its release was followed by the PBS American Masters series premier of her life story, Joan Baez: How Sweet The Sound.

More recently, she was presented with the inaugural Joan Baez Award for Outstanding Inspirational Service in the Global Fight for Human Rights at Amnesty International’s 50th Anniversary meeting in 2012.

She has been a steadfast champion of social justice, marching on the front line of the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King, inspiring Václav Havel in his fight for a Czech Republic, singing on the first Amnesty International tour and more recently, standing alongside Nelson Mandela when the world celebrated his 90th birthday in Hyde Park.

Her earliest recordings fed a host of traditional English and American ballads into the rock vernacular, before she introduced Bob Dylan to the world in 1963, the beginning of a tradition of mutual mentoring that she continues to this day.